Guardians Style Guide (last updated December 2019)
This style guide is a working document and is intended to change with the needs of the organization. If you have questions, concerns, or potential additions to the style guide, please contact the Comms team.
To Be Relied Upon for All Communications
Note: In general, we use AP Style because this is standard for journalists/daily press. However, a few exceptions exist and are generally noted below.
Abbreviations
Agencies, organizations, laws
WEG: Forbidden, verboten, prohibido. Use our full name, WildEarth Guardians, on first reference before shortening to “Guardians.” Please ask colleagues, media, etc. to cease using “WEG.” Further, anytime you see our name without the Wild and the Earth compounded please request a change.
BLM, EPA vs. NOAA, BOEMRE: Widely recognized agency abbreviations may be used after spelling out upon first usage; always include “the” before the abbreviated form. We do not use periods in these agency abbreviations. If name is repeated only once or twice, avoid using the short form altogether; instead, say “the agency” or similar. EPA is so widely known that it can be used without spelling out in PR headers; BLM is a lesser exception and can be used without spelling out in a pinch. Wonky abbreviations such as NOAA, NMFS and BOEMRE, though these are also almost acronyms, should generally not be used; spell out NOAA, for instance, as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and thereafter refer to it as “the agency.”
ESA, other laws: Always spell out as “Endangered Species Act” unless there’s a specific reason not to (for example, “ESA Works” or other titles shortened for catchiness). “The Act” is serviceable after first reference if antecedent is clear. Likewise spell out CAA, CWA, FIFRA etc. Exception: CAFE standards is an acronym (that is, a pronounceable word), rather than simply an abbreviation, which can be used after a first reference to Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standards. No accent on CAFE, please.
NMFS: Use “Fisheries Service” after first use. Upon first use, spell out. In other words, no NMFS.
United States: Spell it out as a noun; use “U.S.” as an adjective. Example: “A U.S. law” but “a treaty never signed by the United States.”
USFWS: Use “the Service” to refer to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service after first use, “Fish and Wildlife Service” if term hasn’t appeared for several paragraphs or if another “Service” also appears.
USGS: U.S. Geological Survey: Spell out on first reference; thereafter agency abbreviation is acceptable.
Other common abbreviations:
CO2: Spell out “carbon dioxide” upon first use, then use “CO2.”
MPH/MPG: The abbreviation mph (no periods) is acceptable in all references for miles per hour. The abbreviation mpg (miles per gallon) is acceptable only on second reference.
ORV, OHV: These are acceptable abbreviations, preferably used after term is spelled out on first use, except in PR headers where they are acceptable for the sake of succinctness.
Place names: “Fort” and “Mount” do not get abbreviated as Ft. and Mt. However, “Saint” does get abbreviated as St.
Capitalization
Administration, as in presidential: Lowercase (“Obama administration,” “the administration”). Try not to overuse; it’s actually a fairly wonky, i.e. sleep-inducing, term. At times, “government” or “the White House” can be used as an alternative.
Ground zero: Do not cap in any metaphorical or even 9/11 references; best to leave “Ground Zero” for Hiroshima or Trinity and go with “ground zero.”
In hyphenated compounds in headlines: Lowercase the word following the hyphen: “River-drying Event” not “River-Drying Event.”
In species names: The only words to be capitalized in species’ common names are those referring to proper nouns, c.f. “Gunnison sage grouse,” “Sonoran desert tortoise,” but not capitalized with greater sage grouse, lesser prairie chicken or desert tortoise (Exception: “Kemp’s ridley”: “ridley” is lowercased for obscure etymological reasons.) NB: For species common names/capitalization, we adhere not to the usage of academic science, which is both variable and often ungrammatical, possibly due to hard scientists’ ideological rejection of the value of the humanities, including, but not limited to, clear speech. Rather we adhere to the usage of AP and when—as is too often the case—a specific instance is not given by AP, The New York Times. On this point, as on some others, we side not with the Ivory Tower but with the journalist on the street.
Mines and other corporate enterprises/landholdings: When a specific mine is being referred to, the official name should be all capped, but a casual reference should leave “mine” in lowercase. Thus, “Roca Honda Uranium Mine,” but “the Roca mine.” Also, more intuitively, “the Ladder ranch in southern New Mexico” but “Ted Turner’s Ladder Ranch.”
National parks, specially designated areas: Lowercase when speaking in general, capitalize when specific place (“Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest,” “Cabinet Mountain Roadless Area,” but “national forests nationwide.” However, when naming two or more specially designated areas, use initial caps: “Apache-Sitgreaves and Gila National Forests,” “West Elk and Cochetopa Hills Roadless Areas”).
Of Earth: Cap in references to the planet qua planet but lowercase in idioms and casual usages: Yoda, “I am a friend of the earth and all its inhabitants,” but “the Earth’s biodiversity is diminishing at an alarming rate.”
Of Congress: It’s “members of Congress,” but “congressional representatives,” or “congressional allies.” “Congressional” is only capped in a proper name such as “Congressional Animal Rights Caucus.”
Of job titles: Capitalize when used before a name as an official title, lowercase in all other capacities (“Interior Secretary Ken Salazar” vs. “the interior secretary” or “Wild Places Program Director Judi Brawer” vs. “Judi Brawer, WildEarth Guardians’ wild places program director”).
Of prepositions in headlines: Capitalize four-letter-plus prepositions such as “From” and “With.” Lowercase shorter prepositions, “of,” “to,” “in,” “for,” “on,” etc.
Of U.S. regions: It’s “the Southwest,” but it’s “a southwestern bird.” Also, we uppercase the modifier in “Northern Rockies” because this is a well-known cultural geographic entity. Also, we cap Cascadia. However, we lowercase “southern New Mexico” and “northern Idaho” due to the fact that these areas are not broadly stereotyped/believed to have a distinctive culture (sorry, y’all).
President: It’s “President Obama” but “the president.”
Public figures: Write out full title and name on first appearance, may subsequently be shortened to partial title and last name (first “Interior Secretary Sally Jewell,” then “Secretary Jewell.” First “President Barack Obama,” then “President Obama”). We don’t use just Obama, or just Sally, we may not like everything they do, but they’ve earned their titles.
Wild and scenic rivers (and similar): Lowercase and use quotation marks (preferably with term “federally designated”) on first use, lowercase without quotation marks after. Incorrect: “The Pecos is a Wild and Scenic River.” Correct: “The Salmon is a federally designated ‘wild and scenic’ river.”
With two-word proper nouns in pairs or series: Lowercase second half of proper noun when it appears at the end (“12th, 13th and 14th streets”). Always capitalize first half of proper nouns, even when in a pair or series (“Sens. Murkowski, McCain and Inhofe”; “Mounts Hood and Adams” and the BBar Ranch).
Case Citations
Correct format is WildEarth Guardians v. Jackson, 885 F. Supp. 2d 1112 (U.S. District Court, New Mexico, 2012). See the Bluebook citation manual.
Celsius
Convert to Fahrenheit. See also “Metric System,” “Kilometers” and “Temperature.”
Easy conversion is available at http://www.onlineconversion.com/, among other free URLs.
Exception: Occasionally, an international PR or a PR that discusses global temperature figures in the context of the climate crisis will be permitted to contain Celsius units. In most cases Fahrenheit numbers should then also be given.
Commas
With lists: We DO use the “series comma,” i.e. the final comma in a simple series (“frogs, snakes, and horny toads,” is correct in our usage, not “frogs, snakes and horny toads”). Here too you will find unhappy counterexamples in our electronically available materials; you may rest assured we are on the case and tackling them one by one, eradicating them methodically and with cold calculation, much as public lands ranchers are seeking to wipe out the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse. Also, we use semicolons in complex series in which at least one series unit includes a comma (“attractive frogs; lascivious, wanton snakes; and horny toads”).
With months, years: If a day is specified, set off the year with commas, but if only a month is specified, there should be no comma before the year. Example: “In October 2013, the federal Wildlife Services program disintegrated due to Tea Party machinations that resulted in the government shutdown.” But: “On October 24, 2013, the federal Wildlife Services program disintegrated due to Tea Party machinations that resulted in the government shutdown.”
With quotation marks: When there’s one sentence or less in quotes, use a comma before opening quotes: Said X, “It’s a crying shame.” But if there are two or more sentences within the quotes, use a colon to introduce the speech. Said X: “It’s a crying shame. It’s really, really a crying shame.”
NB: Commas should be included after years and states in instances such as “the Catron County, New Mexico, plant” and “the Oct. 24, 2013, passage of the Greater Gila Wilderness and Grazing Permit Retirement Act.”
PERSONAL PRONOUNS
On the use of personal pronouns: Guardians is a “we” or and “us” not an “they” or an “it.” This is particularly true on the website. “Our” should be used, not “my” or “mine”, “its” or “their.” “It is our vision, our mission, our intent to ensure that Jeremy continues to control the EPA with invisible strings.”
Common Errors/Troubled Terms
“Adversely modify” is a verb phrase used by bureaucrats to denote “trash,” “graze to oblivion,” “annihilate” or in statistically rarer cases “detonate a nuclear device.” Outside legal documents, scientific petitions and the like, it should not be the phrase we use. Please eradicate it from PRs in favor of more specific and direct language such as “damage,” “hurt,” etc. as appropriate.
“Allege” is not what Guardians does (in our own materials). We rarely even “argue.” We “show,” “assert” or sometimes modestly “demonstrate.” We do not “allege” or certainly stoop so low as to “claim,” since to do so clearly opens the semantic door to the possibility that we might be wrong. In fact, we are never wrong. We are, however, occasionally misunderstood.
American Indian: Unless we’re working with an indigenous partner group that expressly prefers otherwise, we use the term “American Indian” not “Native American,” per AP. Similarly, we refer to “Indian Pueblos” and “Middle Rio Grande Pueblos.” Arguments for and against this both from American Indian/Native American news sources themselves and from differing stylists representing colonizers exist, but it is currently our convention.
Please capitalize the words “Indigenous”, “Tribal”, and “Native” when referring to human beings, and check with an expert if needed about how Tribes and/or Pueblos prefer their proper names to be written. See “JEDI Best Practices” for more on this subject.
Assure vs. ensure vs. insure: When you’re referring to making sure something is going to happen, please use “ensure” (think of the food supplement for sickly or moribund individuals). To “assure” a person of something is to make him or her confident of it. “Insure” is another can of worms entirely; according to AP Style the verb’s use shall be limited to the issuance of insurance policies.
Cyanide bombs. When you are referring to the deadly devices that shoot a stream of sodium cyanide into the mouths of unsuspecting wildlife, please use the term “cyanide bombs” with (M-44s) in parentheses, as needed. Do NOT refer to these devices solely as “M-44s”; nobody knows what that means.
A “Department of Interior” does not, sadly, exist in our nation. Here we are limited to a “Department of the Interior,” which also can be more casually referred to as “the Interior Department” or sometimes, upon second or later reference, the more jocular and comradely “Interior.”
Mitigate: When you use this, it can sometimes be helpful to explain what you mean. What does mitigation mean, in the context you’re describing? Specifics are good.
Pets. Use “companion animals.” Pets implies ownership.
Predators. Use “carnivores.”
Public lands. Do not use “our” before public lands, unless there is a specific and important reason to do so. A majority-white conservation group claiming public lands as “ours” can easily be interpreted as ignoring the disenfranchisement of indigenous people.
Said: In quotes for PRs, just tell us a staff member “said” something, not “added,” “exclaimed,” “remarked,” “declared” or “dropped pearls of wisdom.” “Said” is a workhorse and gets the job done; no embellishments are needed. Exception here for work in more rural areas where entire press releases are often published as stories.
“Take” in the legal, Endangered Species Act context always needs to be defined on first reference. Do not use the term in general parlance unless you’re a quarterback in a college football bowl game and, facing an oncoming rush at the line of scrimmage, your audible for a short out rout for your receivers is: “Take! Take!”
“Rein in” vs. “reign in:” “Reign in” is not an idiom meaning “reduce or control.” The idiom in question is “rein in,” referring to horses.
“Warranted but precluded” is another bureaucratic phrase that always requires explanation. Except in rare strategic instances, this should be presented as bad news for species, not as mixed news as sometimes occurs in press releases, since it equals denial of protection. We prefer something altogether different, more Dantean in nature, about how this newly designated status, “puts the species in purgatory, from which it may never escape.”
Avoid mentioning Wildlife conflicts in those words and frame more positively to emphasize protection. Exception: If wording suggests livestock are the source of a conflict, e.g., “livestock conflicts with wildlife.”
Wildlife Services, the federal wildlife-killing program, is a program, not an agency.
Datelines in Press Releases
Should appear at the beginning of the first paragraph of every press release; denotes city of release or location of action when preferred, e.g. SANTA FE, NM.—. Note capitals and italics.
Stand-alone cities: Many major cities do not require datelines due to being famous, though most of Guardians’ homes do. Denver doesn’t. Ha, take that Santa Fe.
Here is the list of stand-alone U.S. cities:
Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Washington (note: D.C. is not used in datelines).
Dates in Text
Always use Arabic figures, without st, nd, rd or th.
When a month is used with a specific date, abbreviate only Jan., Feb., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov. and Dec. (“The Mexican wolf ate the small child from Catron County on Oct. 4.”)
When a phrase lists only a month and year, do not separate the month and the year with commas. (“January 2013 Mexican wolf numbers highlighted the need for more direct wolf releases.”) But when a phrase refers to a month, day and year, set off the year with commas. (“On Oct. 24, 2013, the wolves descended on Santa Fe and other progressive communities to eat small children.”) See also “Commas.”
Grammatical Bugaboos
“A historic” is preferred over “an historic” as most Americans do not aspirate the “h” when they pronounce that word.
“Different than,” is incorrect; use “different from.”
“Entitled” is incorrect when referring to the title of a work, correct when referring to Miley Cyrus. “Titled” describes the name of a book.
Hyphenation of compound adjectives:
“Sea ice” is a noun. “Sea-ice” is an adjective (e.g., sea-ice habitat).
“Old growth” is a noun. “Old-growth” is an adjective.
“Impact” is best not used as a verb, and as such should be eradicated with moderate prejudice.
“Less” vs. “fewer”: “Less than” should be used when writing about a bulk or quantity you can’t count individually, while “fewer than” should be used when writing about things that can be counted individually. Example: “Guardians employees make less money than workers at Exxon-Mobil and therefore have fewer dollars to spend.” Or “There are fewer than 4,000 people living in Catron County ” but “There was clearly less water in the Rio Grande than in every kitchen sink in Albuquerque.”
“Over” vs. “more than”: “Over” is often incorrectly used when “more than” is correct. “Over” is better used to define a spatial relationship or duration of time; use “more than” in connection with large quantities (“more than 340 species,” not “over 340 species”).
“Past” vs. “last”: The first is preferred in time formulations such as “over the past few decades.” Try to avoid “over the last few decades.” “Last” implies terminal, and we’ve chosen to spin optimistic on this one and wager that the human race is not in the End Times this particular year. However, our status in that regard will be updated with periodic revisions of the Stylebook.
“That” vs. “which”: Use “that” to introduce essential clauses, “which” to introduce nonessential clauses. In practice, this means “which” comes only after a comma. Examples: “The cows, which were not native to the environment, destroyed the riparian area.” Or: “The animals that were native were less destructive than the non-native species.”
(Arcane exception: If “this,” “that,” “these” or “those” has already introduced an essential clause, you may use “which” to introduce the next clause, whether it is essential or nonessential. But usually in that case “which” can be omitted to streamline language. Example: “That’s a decision which you must live with for the rest of your life” is correct, but better is “That’s a decision you must live with for the rest of your life.”)
“Toward” is correct. “Towards” is not. Towards is not even a word.
Headlines in Press Releases
Should not typically contain articles such as “a” or “the”; should not begin with “Conservation Groups [Do X or Y]” for the obvious reason that every PR we issue would by that token begin with this dull and somewhat narcissistic construction. The action is key. Semantic focus should always be on saving species rather than enforcing laws. NB: Headers should ideally be 14 words or fewer and even if longer, always short and to the point for lay readers. WordPress requires subheadings when posting a PR to the website, so send one along for use online even if you don’t use one when sending the PR.
Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Best Practices
As an organization, we are committed to becoming more just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive. The language we use in all our communications and social media is an important part of that effort. We do not always succeed. Below are some examples of past Guardians communications that were problematic, and the lessons we learned from them that we can use to improve in the future.
[If you’ve gotten this far, congratulations! Perhaps you have examples of problematic communications language in mind? If so, please email the Comms team!]
Key terms
Many formerly compound words have become one word; we usually prefer one-word, nonhyphenated terms to the alternatives.
Examples:
Overfishing—one word, not hyphenated (although our Friends at Friends of Animals will always remove that term from joint releases)
Bycatch—one word, no hyphen
Freshwater—as adjective, one word; as noun, two
Offshore—one word, no hyphen
Rainforest
Seabird
Slideshow
Cleanup
“WildEarth Guardians submitted a scientific petition” or “legal petition” is usually preferred to as “WildEarth Guardians petitioned” in online communications such as alerts and EEO. (“Guardians petitioned” is acceptable on website and in print newsletters to avoid awkwardness of frequency of use.)
Kilometers, Meters
Are for everyone with a logical, communal bias from which U.S. decision-makers do not as yet suffer; see “Metric System” below. Convert to miles, feet, yards as appropriate.
Legalese
Avoid it. Legal jargon and typographical conventions are not the same as standard English. Some tendencies to look out for are listed here.
“The County” vs. “the county”; “the City” vs. “the city.” Generally, we do not cap references to geographical entities where the actual proper noun is absent. Should we convert all our materials into the language of Goethe, you will surely receive an email, but until that decision is made we refrain from capping regular nouns. Thus, “San Bernardino County,” but “the county.” Also, “New York City” but “the city of New York.”
“The Plaintiff(s)”: Again, do not cap in the German style. World War II did not end favorably for proponents of Aryan world domination.
See also “adversely modify” and other unwelcome phrases in the section “Common Errors/Troubled Terms.”
Legal Opinions
See “Case Citations.”
Metric System
Is an international decimalized system of measurement, first adopted by France in 1791 in the wake of that nation’s populist insurgency, which is the common system of measuring units throughout most of the world.
Don’t use it.
This is not the rest of the world; this is America. Along with our like-minded partners in Burma and Liberia (although these former stalwarts seem to be leaning away from our position recently), we have rejected metric on the grounds that it may well threaten our sovereignty. We prefer inches, feet, yards, miles and pounds. We abominate alike the centimeter, the meter, the kilometer and the kilogram.
Easy conversion from metric is available at http://www.onlineconversion.com/, among many other free URLs.
See also “Temperature,” “Celsius” and “Kilometers.”
Numbers and Numerals
Circuit Courts: Use numerals: 9th Circuit Court, not Ninth Circuit.
Fractions in text: Are usually spelled out, with hyphens (“two-thirds”). Exceptions can be made for succinctness in headers.
Percent: Spell out instead of using symbol (%). Use numerals for percents, even with single digits: 5 percent, not five percent.
Ranges: It’s 10 million to 20 million, not 10 to 20 million, and 6 percent to 10 percent, not 6 to 10 percent.
Spell out numbers from one to nine (even in measurements), use figures for numbers 10 and higher.
Exception 1: Spell out numbers 10 and higher when they begin a sentence.
Exception 2: Use figures for 1-9 if prefacing “percent” (see above) or “million.” So: 1 million, 6 million, 66 million, 6.9 billion.
Exception 3: Use figures for ordinal numbers applying to geographic, military and political designations such as 1st Ward, 7th Fleet, 9th District.
Party Affiliation
The correct style is Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. With plurals, we still abbreviate. Examples: “Reps. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), John Boehner (R-Ohio), Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) engaged in a dual with semi-automatic weapons at a Tea Party-sponsored fundraiser.” Or “Sens. Hatch (R-Utah) and Lee (R-Utah) sponsored the bill, which aims to prohibit charisma in public servants.”
State Abbreviations
Here is the list of correct state abbreviations to use in text, party affiliation and datelines. A handful of states never abbreviate in text; the others have abbreviations that often differ from postal abbreviations (e.g. Ariz., Calif., W.Va.)
Ala. Ga. Mich. N.C. R.I. Wis.
Ariz. Ill. Minn. N.D. S.C. Wyo.
Ark. Ind. Miss. N.H. S.D.
Calif. Kan. Mo. N.M. Tenn.
Colo. Ky. Mont. N.Y. Vt.
Conn. La. Neb. Okla. Va.
Del. Md. Nev. Ore. Wash.
Fla. Mass. N.H. Pa. W. Va.
*Do not abbreviate Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, Texas and Utah
(the two states that are not part of the contiguous United States and the states that are five letters or fewer).*
Note: Though it’s WASHINGTON— in datelines, it’s Washington, D.C., in body text.
Publication Titles
In a bold exception to AP, we italicize publication names rather than using Roman in quotes, viewing the AP convention as a throwback to more difficult technological times for typesetting. Capitalize and italicize “the” only when it’s in a publication’s official title: The New York Times, but the Arizona Daily Star.
Italicize state or city only when part of the publication’s official title.
Punctuation Other Than Commas
Dashes: Guardians uses em-dashes instead of en-dashes, with no spaces, as in “The rare animals—pika and yellow-bellied marmot among them—were devoured by a group of feral Republicans.” (En-dashes are shorter.)
Hyphens:
With –ly words: These shorter dashlike elements are not to be used after adverbial modifiers ending in “–ly.” Incorrect: “Dancing down the street, the stupidly-happy man tripped.” There, leave out the hyphen. But often they are to be used with adjectival modifiers. So “The lovely-faced copy editor” is utterly correct.
If in doubt, you can generally tell the difference between adverbs and adjectives pretty easily:
adjective = noun + ly (eg. love + ly = lovely)
adverb = adjective + ly (stupid + ly = stupidly)
With neologisms referring to electronic: It’s email (no hyphen; exception to AP) but e-commerce.
With prefix “non”: In terms like “nontoxic,” “nonprofit,” “nonlethal,” do not hyphenate. In nonwords with proper nouns, such as “non-German,” do hyphenate.
Spaces: Please leave only one after periods, not two.
Quotation marks: Please, for the sake of all that is righteous, curl them.
Species Names, Scientific
Use these in PRs chiefly in first reference to a species, after the common name, in background sections on natural history/species information. Do so methodically. “The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is a…”
Spelling
Vermilion, not vermillion. Also see “Common Errors/Troubled Terms.”
States
State names after both cities and counties should be abbreviated: Pinch County, Ala.
Temperature
Use Fahrenheit. AP Style is 60F or 60 degrees Fahrenheit. See “Metric System” or “Celsius.”
Web
AP Style on this, which we follow until further notice, is as follows: “Web,” a short form of the World Wide Web, is capitalized when it stands alone. It’s also capped in terms with separate words: the Web, Web page, Web feed. When used to form compound words, web is lowercase: website, webcam, webcast.
Thus Web page is two words, but website is one, according to AP. Since both “page” and “site” are stand-alone words.
Active v. Passive Voice
Finally, please, please, please write in active voice. We are an active, engaged organization. Passive voice makes us sound dull, outdated, boring. Watch out for “have been….,” a tell-tale sign of passive voice. When in doubt, do a word count. “There is,” “there are” are also boring, lazy ways to start a sentence. Activate it.
“Guardians has been taking embarrassing staff pictures as an assurance against staff leaving to join groups like Defenders” is passive. “Guardians takes embarrassing staff pictures as an assurance against staff leaving to join groups like Defenders” is active.
